


overheard in a seemingly innocent grove

by spoke



Category: Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 16:54:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10903542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke





	overheard in a seemingly innocent grove

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goosecathedral](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goosecathedral/gifts).



Still a blight there haunts the glen  
still pained are the whispers of goblin men  
And shall we call then men?  
What else could we call them, then?

“Careful of the human maids,  
take you none whose heart is swayed,  
by love of any like herself  
for there is where the danger dwells

Then all your hopes die on the vine,  
your fruit be felled before its time,  
and death you’ll visit on the glen.  
Be careful of them, goblin men.

* * *

Grandmother always told me she'd followed the voices of strange little men because her own grandmother had told her not to. Which, to a young lady with a rebellious streak of her own, made perfect sense. The fact that the song she'd heard them singing seemed to be about her grandmother, I chalked up to failing memory.

And then I heard my own little man, or so I assume he must have been. Myself, I'd just stayed out stupidly late, not really thinking anything of it. I fell asleep under a friendly seeming apple tree, just past the season for the flowers. When I woke up, and I will swear I was awake, I coukd hear a voice that seemed... a bit of a purr, if a tree could purr? There was something green about it, leafy. 

And the trees were whispering back, but I couldn't make out what they were saying.

But the green voice...

* * *

No leaves, but twisted little sticks that cast grasping shadows. No seeds and no fruit, but the shadows of them crawl and weep, never able to get free, or do anything but give screaming nightmares to those who try to hear them. It sits there, a blight in the heart of the grove, and none of them dare try to remove it. She stole it from the other girl, after all, and how is a mystery still. What if it spread from the maker to any child foolish enough to touch it?

It sits there, a weeping rot, and who would have the heart to silence it?

Or the courage, come to that. And the whispers born of its weeping spread, wondering about our nature and about the trees, for they say we’re born of humans and yet... What proof do we have of that? We don’t look a bit like them, really, with their ‘men’ and their ‘women’ and all the same shape?

Bizzare creatures. You never see the seeds, either, just different sizes of them that act different. Like animals, that, not proper growth at all. You can’t trust anything that doesn’t have proper roots, I say. So when did we start trying to get the attention of the little women, then?

Sure and I get cursed for that, but I’m past the point of caring really. That thing cannot be right, and there are all the stories of how we used to look different, and we had nothing to do with the humans, and high time we got back to that somehow, I’d say. 

Blasphemy my ass. You look at that tree as it is, a rot fit to give even humans nightmares, heartless beasts that they are, and tell me it’s right. Look at the trees around it, sure healthy as we know the term, but still akin to it in a way, and then you go further back in the glen.

Yes, yes, I know we’re not supposed to go further back, they say something awful happened and they don’t want that to spread. We cut it off, sure, to keep it spreading. Like _that_ , hmmm? You ever think that maybe we’re the something awful that happened, and we did spread, and the trees further back in the grove...

Well, I’ve seen them. And they look nothing like ours. Older and yet not a bit withered, and their voices... well. I half think it might be what the humans feel like when they taste our fruits and feed our trees. Only I didn’t feel weak, or strange, or any of this dying nonsense they whine about when a tree starts growing.

You’d think they were never coming back, the way they go on about it, when even humans have the sense to plant themselves. I mean what else does someone go in the ground for, but to sprout. Where do they even imagine proper trees come from?

I mean, not that they have proper trees up there anymore, just the sleeping and the voiceless. But surely they know the point of putting someone in the ground. No, you’re not going to convince me they grow _that_ differently, that’s just ridiculous. Now hush will you, I’m trying to explain something important.

So the trees furthest back, or as far I’ve been able to go, they don’t care about humans. You’d think, as often as we’d been told we need them to grow, that the old grove would be asking why I wasn’t working on snaring a human of my own, right? ... they don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s right creepy I’d say. They seem to think I’m sick, and I don’t know...

I think they might be right. And I don’t know what to do about that.

What?! No, I’m not suggesting we take a torch to the grove, are you mad?! What good would that even do, can you tell me? You don’t cut down a whole tree because a few fruits aren’t growing right, and you don’t burn the world because of it either. 

What we need, see, is to figure out how to grow right. How did this start? Knowing that might help us stop it, and then the dark parts of the glen would just be... a shadow. One we’d passed through on our way away from the humans. 

Personally I think it has something to do with that skeleton back there. Oh yes indeed, human bones with all the flesh fallen off like a tree without leaves, and a nasty iron axe it has. Can’t stand to touch the thing myself, but maybe if we could lure a human down here to get rid of it...

No, I have no more idea than you how to do it. But there has to be some way, we can’t keep on as it is. The voices of the newest trees are on their way to being more creepy than the rotting one, and that’s a fact. Never heard such nonsense as out of that little poplar, and I swear the young willow’s going to try to eat its own seeds when they fall, and if that isn’t madness what is.

I don’t know, I really don’t. I’ve been leaving paths open all over, but not a taker yet. Maybe if I study the humans a bit more I’ll be able to figure out what could entice one of them to do a goblin a favor. Sure as truth we’re not getting out of this ourselves, and if it’s that damned axe then its their fault anyway.

* * *

...and I don't know if I should feel guilty or not, because there never was an axe in any of Grandmother's stories. I don't know if I should be looking for his paths, either, but I do know that I am and should or shouldn't don't come into it. There was a pain in that green voice I hope I never hear again, and if I can find this axe of his and get it away from them, then I'll have done more good in the world from that than my whole life so far.

And maybe I'll stop having nightmares about it, besides.


End file.
